THE PARENTAGE OF AGNI. unfrequently Indra is said to be Agni, and Agni is said to be Indra, while both alike are Skambha, the supporter of the universe.1 IV. 419 attributes Hence the character of the god, as we might expect, is almost Physical wholly physical. The blessings which his worshippers pray for are of Agni. commonly temporal, and very rarely is he asked, like Varuna, to forgive sin. In the earlier hymns, he is generally addressed as the fire which to mortal men is an indispensable boon: in the more developed ceremonialism of later times he is chiefly concerned with the ordering of the sacrifice. As bearing up the offerings on the flames which mount to the sky, he stands in the place of Hermes as the messenger between gods and men. Like Phoibos and Indra, he is full of a secret wisdom. He is the tongue (of fire) through which gods and men receive each their share of the victims offered on the altar. Nay, so clearly is his mythical character still understood, that, although he is sometimes the originator of all things, at others he is said to have been kindled by Manu (man), and the expression at once carries us to the legends of Prometheus, Hermes, and Phorôneus, who is himself the Vedic god of fire Bhuranyu. The very sticks which Manu rubbed together are with his ten fingers called the parents of Agni, who is said to have destroyed them, as Oidipous and Perseus, Cyrus and Romulus are said to have destroyed their fathers. The hymns describe simply the phenomena of fire, which disappears or dies with a hiss or scream when it touches the water, even as the sun's orb is extinguished when it plunges into the seething bosom of the ocean. "O Agni, thou from whom, as a new-born male, undying flames proceed, the brilliant smoke-god goes towards the sky, for as messenger thou art sent to the gods. "Thou, whose power spreads over the earth in a moment when thou hast grasped food with thy jaws-like a dashing army thy blast goes forth; with thy lambent flame thou seemest to tear up the grass. "Him alone, the ever youthful Agni, men groom, like a horse in the evening and at dawn; they bed him as a stranger in his couch; the light of Agni, the worshipped male, is lighted. "Thy appearance is fair to behold, thou bright-faced Agni, when like gold thou shinest at hand; thy brightness comes like the lightning of heaven; thou showest splendour like the bright sun. 1 Although in a multitude of passages Agni is spoken of in terms which can be predicated only of a supreme deity, this, it has been well said, proves no more than that "all the divinities are of the same igneous nature, and that Agni who in his lowest manifestation is ordinary earthly flame, in his highest 2 R. V. vii. 3; Max Müller, Sanskr. BOOK The infant Agni. Agni the Psychopompos. "Adorable and excellent Agni, emit the moving and graceful smoke. "The flames of Agni are luminous, powerful, fearful, and not to be trusted:"1 phrases which bring before us at once the capriciousness and sullenness of Meleagros and Achilleus. Like Indra, Agni is also Vritrahan. "I extol the greatness of that showerer of rain whom men celebrate as the slayer of Vritra: the Agni, Vaiśwánara, slew the stealer of the waters." Like Indra, again, and the later Krishna, he is "the lover of the maidens, the husband of the wives." He is "black-backed" and "many-limbed ;” "his hair is flame," and "he it is whom the two sticks have engendered, like a new-born babe." "Thou art laid hold of with difficulty," the poet truly says, "like the young of tortuously twining snakes, thou who art a consumer of many forests as a beast is of fodder." + As the infant Hermes soon reaches his full strength, so the flames of Agni, who, puny at his birth, is kept alive by clarified butter, roar after a little while like the waves of the sea. But Agni consumes that which Hermes is constrained to leave untasted, and scathes the forest with his tongue, shearing off the hair of the earth as with a razor. As the special guardian and regulator of sacrifices, Agni assumes the character of the Hellenic Hestia, and almost attains the majesty of the Latin Vesta. He is the lord and protector of every house, and the father, mother, brother, and son of every one of the worshippers. He is the keeper of hidden treasures, and all blessings proceed from him as the giver. He is Vasu, the lord of light. During life he 1 H. H. Wilson, Rig Veda S. vol. i. pp. 102-104. 8 lb. i. 180. 2 lb. ii. 158. Of the existence of the root vas, to the same form VAS. . . but none gives a satisfactory meaning; the best perhaps is that which means to clothe, so that spring should be the reclothing of nature; but this may be thought fanciful."-Introd. to Gr. and Lat. Etymology, 89. Meanwhile we have the facts that other names for one season of the year have been used to denote the year itself. "Man erinnere sich nur an sarad, herbst, Pers. sál, jahr: varshâh, regenzeit, oder právrish im Veda, dann varsha, jahr; hima, winter, im bimus, zwei wintrig. i.e. zweijährig." Thus also, Professor Müller adds, we have the modified form vat in Skr. samvat, as well as in vatsa, vatsara, and samvatsara, and in the Greek, TOS, FETOS, the year; thus too the Sanskrit parat for para-vat, in the previous year, explains the Greek rep " KALI AND KARALI. 421 shields men from harm, and at death he becomes the Psychopompos, CHAP. as conveying the "unborn part" of the dead to the unseen world.1 IV. tongues of But in every phase of his character the appellative force of his The name remains discernible; nor are there wanting plain assertions Agni. that Agni is but one of many titles for the One Great Cause of all things. "They call (him) Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; then he is the well-winged heavenly Garutmat: that which is One, the wise call it many ways: they call it Agni, Yama, Mâtariśvan." In India, however, as in the western world, there was a constant tendency to convert names into persons, and then to frame for them a mythical history in accordance with their meaning. Thus two of the ever-flickering tongues of the black-pathed Agni were called Kali, the black, and Karali, the terrific; and these became names of Durga, the wife of Siva, who was developed out of Agni; and a bloody sacrificial worship was the result.3 Like Ushas and Eôs, Agni never grows old. He is emphatically Agni and Hephaisthe youngest of all the gods, not as being the latest born, but as never tos. losing his strength and might; and in this name Yavishtha, which is never given to any other Vedic god, we may recognise the Hellenic Hephaistos. But the name Agni vo-1 for Téρ-VT-1. This form vat or ut he traces back to a time preceding the dispersion of the Aryan tribes; the term viavròs answering to samvat, may, he thinks, be later. In all this the idea certainly seems to be that of brilliance, and so of freshness, passing into that of youth and thus, Professor Müller adds, we have the Greek Firaλós, the Latin vitulus, meaning literally a yearling, as bimus and trimus would denote creatures two or three years old. Hence vitulus would answer precisely to xiuaipa as a winterling, i.e. one winter old. Lastly, he remarks, "der Samvatsara, das Jahr oder die Jahres-sonne, aus dem Schoosse der Wasser geboren wird," a myth which only repeats the story of the birth of Aphrodite and every other dawn-goddess. 1 Brown, Religion of Zoroaster, § 30. 2 R. V. i. 164, 46; Max Müller, Sanskr. Lit. 567. 2 Muir, Sanskr, Texts, part iv. p. 365, 425. For the worship of Kali by the Thugs as the goddess of darkness and death, see Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 385. Professor Max Muller thinks that this identification must be regarded as scarcely open to doubt. The name is nowhere found in the west as Hephaistos, he says, became the subject BOOK The infant Agni. Agni the Psychopompos. "Adorable and excellent Agni, emit the moving and graceful smoke. "The flames of Agni are luminous, powerful, fearful, and not to be trusted: "1 phrases which bring before us at once the capriciousness and sullenness of Meleagros and Achilleus. Like Indra, Agni is also Vritrahan. "I extol the greatness of that showerer of rain whom men celebrate as the slayer of Vritra: the Agni, Vaiśwánara, slew the stealer of the waters." Like Indra, again, and the later Krishna, he is "the lover of the maidens, the husband of the wives." a He is "black-backed" and "many-limbed;" "his hair is flame," and "he it is whom the two sticks have engendered, like a new-born babe.” "Thou art laid hold of with difficulty," the poet truly says, "like the young of tortuously twining snakes, thou who art a consumer of many forests as a beast is of fodder."4 As the infant Hermes soon reaches his full strength, so the flames of Agni, who, puny at his birth, is kept alive by clarified butter, roar after a little while like the waves of the sea. But Agni consumes that which Hermes is constrained to leave untasted, and scathes the forest with his tongue, shearing off the hair of the earth as with a razor. As the special guardian and regulator of sacrifices, Agni assumes the character of the Hellenic Hestia, and almost attains the majesty of the Latin Vesta. He is the lord and protector of every house, and the father, mother, brother, and son of every one of the worshippers." He is the keeper of hidden treasures, and all blessings proceed from him as the giver. He is Vasu, the lord of light. During life he 1 H. H. Wilson, Rig Veda S. vol. i. Pp. 102-104. 2 lb. ii. 158. 4 lb. iii. 253. $ Ib. i. 180. Muir, Principal Deities of R. V. 569. Of the existence of the root vas, to shine, there can be, of course, no doubt. It is sufficiently shown by its derivatives φαος, φαίνω, φημί, φήμη, for, fatum, &c. Hence Professor Max Müller naturally refers to this root the Sanskrit vasar, Lat. ver (for vesr), the Greek elap, čap, 7p, the spring-time, and other words denoting the year, which seem to be akin to it. It is thus the shining gleaming time when nature displays herself in her beauty: but in Mr. Peile's judgment the meaning is nevertheless very uncertain. "There are three distinct roots," he remarks, "of . the same form VAS. . but none gives a satisfactory meaning; the best perhaps is that which means to clothe, so that spring should be the reclothing of nature; but this may be thought fanciful."-Introd. to Gr. and Lat. Etymology, 89. Meanwhile we have the facts that other names for one season of the year have been used to denote the year itself. "Man erinnere sich nur an sarad, herbst, Pers. sâl, jahr: varshah, regenzeit, oder právrish im Veda, dann varsha, jahr; hima, winter, im bimus, zwei wintrig. i.e. zweijährig. Thus also, Professor Müller adds, we have the modified form vat in Skr. samvat, as well as in vatsa, vatsara, and samvatsara, and in the Greek, TOS, Féros, the year; thus too the Sanskrit parat for para-vat, in the previous year, explains the Greek rep PHORÔNEUS AND NIOBÊ. IV. 423 lodikê, a word which indicates the judicial powers of the Greek CHAP. stia and the Latin Vestia. For the same reason, he is also dded to Peitho, persuasion. Among his children are Pelasgos, sos, and Agenor, of whom a later tradition said that after their her's death they divided the kingdom of Argos among themselves. e is thus described as the father of the Pelasgic race, in contrast th Deukalion, who is the progenitor of the Hellenic tribes. But is unnecessary to enter the ethnological labyrinth from which it ems as impossible to gather fruit as from the barren sea. It is nough to say that Agenor, in this Argive myth, is a brother of urôpê, while in that of the Phoinikian land he is her father, and that rgos and Phoinikia are alike the glistening regions of the purple awn. The phrase that Eurôpê, the broad-spreading morning light, the daughter of Phorôneus, corresponds precisely with the myth hich makes Hephaistos cleave the head of Zeus to allow the dawn o leap forth in its full splendour. But from fire comes smoke and apour, and Phorôneus is thus the father of Niobê, the rain-cloud, who weeps herself to death on Mount Sipylos. As gathering to one centre the Argives, who had thus far dwelt Hestia. scattered without a notion of social order and law, Phorôneus discharges the functions of Hestia. Nay, his Astu is Hestia, the inviolable fire on the sacred hearth which may not be moved but stands fast for ever.1 But no great accretion of myths was possible in the case either of Phorôneus or of Hestia. The legend, such as it is, belongs to that class of transparent stories among which the myths of Endymiôn, Narkissos, Daphnê, Sarpêdôn, and Memnôn are among the most conspicuous; and the beneficial influence of her cultus is perhaps most strongly marked by the almost complete absence of folk-lore in connexion with her name. She is so clearly the fire on the hearth, the symbol and the pledge of kindliness and good faith, of law and order, of wealth and fair dealing, that it was impossible to lose sight of her attributes or to forget their origin; and except under these conditions there can be no full developement of mythology. Of no other deity perhaps was the worship so nearly an unmixed blessing. Falsehood and treachery, fickleness and insin The names Astu and Hestia are both referred by Preller to the Sanskrit vas, to dwell, the cognate Greek forms being (w and w, thus connecting together the Latin Vesta and sedes, a permanent habitation. But on the other hand it is urged that the name Hestia may more reasonably be referred to the root vas, to shine, which has yielded Vasu as a name for Agni, as |